7. Alternatives

7.1. Unslung

One of my slugs will be used as an archive with big disks, preferrably more than 2. So I decided to try Unslung.
So I downloaded the latest Unslung from http://www.slug-firmware.net/u-dls.php
and put in the root of my webserver. Reboot & redboot:

DO NOT plug in any disks
For some reason the slug turns up as 192.168.1.77, but gateway and DNS are correct. That's OK; we'll change that.
At 192.168.1.77, you'll get a modified web-interface, where you can login as admin/admin.
First set the network parameters. In that way, it won't interfere with my other slug-activities.

Now, apart from the nice Tux, nothing much changed compared to the original Linksys interface. So we'll first enable telnet.
That is a non-obvious action. You need to simulate a web-client. See

Don't forget the blank lines before and after the action-line. As an answer, you'll get a web-page.
If not, add an extra blank line.

DO NOT plug in any disks
That enables telnet. You can login as admin/admin, but the slug logs you out immediately.
Look at
http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/FAQ/CantTelnetToMyNewlyUnslungNSLU2.
So, because we have not plugged-in any disks, we can login with root/uNSLUng. That does not lock us out.

Now, Unslung has a very unclear way of handling authentication. There are files all over the place. You'll
find that, once you plugged in a disk, you suddenly cannot log-in anymore.
If you plug in an extra disk, it
often does not get recognized. Attaching via a HUB is also out of the question.

Behaviour of Unslung is unpredictable and it does not do more than the original NSLU2.
So, although I got it working, I will remove it. It is just marginally better than
the original Linksys firmware.

So that is the last you'll see of my unslung-adventure.

7.2. SlugOS

Another minimal slug replacement is slugOS.
Download it from http://www.slug-firmware.net/, and put it in
the root of your webserver.
Telnet into redboot:

After login, you'll need to initialize a bit; First run turnup init and answer the dialog:

root@pheadrus:~$ turnup init
Please enter a new password for 'root'.
The password must be non-empty for ssh login to succeed!
Changing password for root
Enter the new password (minimum of 5, maximum of 8 characters)
Please use a combination of upper and lower case letters and numbers.
Enter new password:
Re-enter new password:
Password changed.
Host name [pheadrus]:
Domain name [home]:
Boot protocol (dhcp|static) [static]:
IP address [192.168.1.103]:
IP netmask [255.255.255.0]:
IP gateway [192.168.1.3]:
First DNS server [192.168.1.2]: 192.168.1.101
Second DNS server []: 192.168.1.2
Third DNS server []:
turnup init: you must reboot for the changes to take effect
You may want to run 'turnup preserve' to save these settings,
after making any additional configuration changes which you
require.

The USB-stick was neatly recognized.
Next, we want to put the root filesystem on the usb-stick:

7.2.1. NFS server

Ok; let's install the NFS-server. First update the package-list and install the NFS-server:

ipkg update
ipkg install nfs-utils

Now this installs the NFS-server.
However, it does not create an nfs-exports-file. For me, creating an nfs-export is simple; I want all
the media that I attach exported. So I added the following lines to /etc/init.d/nfsserver